The inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
content in the Australian National Curriculum:
A cultural, cognitive and socio-political evaluation
Kevin Lowe and Tyson Yunkaporta
Abstract
THE ANALYSIS PRESENTED in this paper is an evaluation of the specific
tagged ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ content as described
in course Content Descriptions and Elaborations in each of
the first four ACARA curriculum documents. The analysis is in
three forms: 1) a multilayered cultural analysis based on work by
Grant and Yunkaporta; 2), an analysis based on Bloom’s revised
taxonomy of the cognitive expectations of student learning
embedded within each curriculum document; and 3) an analysis
of the learning opportunities provided to students across a range
of significant socio-political issues. The findings of this initial
analysis raises serious questions about ACARA’s assertion that
they intend to provide all students with the opportunities to
develop a deep understanding of the histories and cultures of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The paper argues
that there appears to be a clear lack of intention on ACARA’s part
to engage fully with the potential of the Australian Curriculum
to integrate high-quality learning around the histories and
cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
1. Context — The Australian Curriculum and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
(ACARA) has as its statutory remit, the development of
Foundation to Year 10 curriculum for the four learning areas of
English, Mathematics, Science and History. This was undertaken
in collaboration with a range of stakeholders, including state and
territory school systems and curriculum authorities, teachers,
parents, key industry bodies, and key peak bodies, including
those representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Though consultations were held through the various phases of
curriculum development, it was seen that the many issues
identified by Aboriginal educators in these forums about the
quality, substance and form of ‘Aboriginal content’ was either
largely ignored, or addressed through the addition of additional
non-mandatory content to the Content Elaborations. These
responses by ACARA proved to be a significant impetus for this
three-way analysis of the embedded cross curriculum content
within the first four national curriculum documents.
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K E V I N L O W E A N D T Y S O N Y U N K A P O R TA
ACARA has acknowledged that the Australian
Curriculum must be relevant to the lives of all
students, and address the many contemporary issues
that students face. The development of the Australian
Curriculum has been taking place over three broad
phases, guided by two key documents: the Melbourne
Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians
(Ministerial Council on Education, 2008) and The
Shape of the Australian Curriculum (Australian
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority,
2011). The Melbourne Declaration sets out in the
broadest terms the purpose and outcomes of
schooling and post-secondary education; whilst the
Shape Paper provides a background for the development and implementation of the first draft of
Foundation to Year 10 courses that will make up the
Australian Curriculum.
The Shape Paper identified that one of the priority
areas to be addressed across all curriculum areas
is the histories and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples. To this end, ACARA published
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Curriculum
Cross-curriculum Priorities (Australian Curriculum,
Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2011) statement, which provides a conceptual framework which
curriculum writers would use to embed learning
experiences to allow all students to develop an
understanding of the historical and contemporary
lives, histories and cultures of Aboriginal people.
ACARA argued that this is necessary in order to:
ensure that all young Australians will be given
the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding
and appreciation of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander histories and cultures, their
significance for Australia and the impact these
have had, and continue to have, on our
world. (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority, 2011, p. 22)
The undertaking given by ACARA in the Shape Paper
was translated into a draft document on the place of
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander curriculum
priority within the Australian Curriculum (ACARA,
2011a). The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
histories and cultures priorities paper provided a
rationale and framework for the inclusion of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ sense
of identity and culture, within the three themes:
People, Culture and Country and Place. These ideas
were then developed into three ‘Organising Ideas’,
with each in turn being expanded into three interrelated content areas. This it was claimed would
2
guide the development of integrated and responsive
teaching across the initial courses in English (ACARA,
2011e), Mathematics (ACARA, 2011c), Science
(ACARA, 2011d) and History (ACARA, 2011b).
For that document to meet the stated purpose of
providing a structural tool for embedding specific
content, it had to be completed in time to influence
the development and writing of curriculum.
Consultation on the Cross-curriculum Priorities
document was still continuing in late 2011 — as
ACARA was well aware long after the Ministerial
Council for Education, Early Childhood Development
and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA) had endorsed both
the curriculum Content Descriptions in December
2010, and Course Achievement Standards in October
2011. This inability to complete the Cross-curriculum
Priorities document before the initial completion
phase of curriculum development critically impacted
ACARA’s capacity to strategically scope the embedding
of authentic curriculum content responsive to
histories and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples. ACARA’s tardiness in completing
this document demonstrates a level of disingenuousness about not only their own curriculum development processes, but also their stated commitment
to collaborate with all stakeholders in all phases of
their work (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority, 2011).
The analysis presented in this paper is a threelevel evaluation of the specific tagged ‘Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander’ content in each of the
first four ACARA curriculum documents. It is based
on an investigation of the curriculum content
found in both Content Descriptions and Elaborations.
The analysis is in three forms: 1) a multilayered
cultural analysis based on work by Grant (1998)
and Yunkaporta (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009;
Yunkaporta & NSW Department of Education and
Communities – Western Region); 2) an analysis based
on Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2000;
Krathwohl, 2002) of the cognitive expectations of
student learning embedded within the learning
statements of the four initial Foundation to Year 10
curriculum documents; and 3) an analysis of the
learning opportunities provided to students, to
expose them to the range of significant socio-political
issues that represent significant turning points in
the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples. The authors examined the assertion given
by ACARA that it would provide opportunities for all
students to develop a deeper understanding of the
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THE INCLUSION OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER CONTENT
cultures and histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples. These have been mapped to key
social and historical concepts that have been written
into the documents in order to analyse the inclusion
of those events and issues that represent key elements
of the ‘histories’ of Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians. This evaluation investigates whether
this content is explicitly identified and if so, to what
extent, in order to ascertain the depth of knowledge,
skills and understanding to which students will be
exposed.
The findings of this initial analysis raises serious
questions about both the accuracy and genuineness
of ACARA’s claim that they intend to provide all
students with the opportunities to develop a deep
understanding of the histories and cultures of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We
would argue there appears to be a clear lack of will,
ability, or intention, on ACARA’s part to engage fully
with the potential of the Australian Curriculum to
integrate high-quality learning around the histories
and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples, and a failure to adequately address the very
issues and concepts that ACARA itself identified as
being central to the development of student learning.
2. Cultural appraisal of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander perspectives
in the Australian Curriculum
An Indigenous cultural analysis tool
In seeking to undertake an analysis of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander perspectives in the Australian
Curriculum, a cultural matrix tool is proposed to
measure both the breadth of content and depth of
perspective. For breadth and integrity of Aboriginal
content, we have employed Uncle Dr Ernie Grant’s
Indigenous framework from Cape York (Grant, 1998).
It comprises six elements, as indicated in Table 1.
For depth of Aboriginal perspectives, four elements
of Aboriginal epistemology/ontology from the
Department of Education and Communities’ (DEC)
Western Region Aboriginal pedagogy framework,
8ways (Yunkaporta, 2009) has been used: see Figure 1.
This framework is increasingly informing program
development and teaching practice in schools across
New South Wales (Yunkaporta & NSW Department
of Education and Communities – Western Region).
The elements used here are not the pedagogies
themselves, but the four elements identified as
aspects of Aboriginal ways of valuing, being, doing
and knowing (which relate to Indigenous perspectives, rather than Indigenised content).
Postscript
Land
Language
Culture
Time
Place
Relationships
TO
PR
S
O
UE
L
VA
CO
LS
Figure 1. 8ways pedagogical framework (Yunkaporta,
2009)
S
TE
M
SY
S
S
SE
S
CE
CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 33, NO. 1
Table 1. Cultural matrix to measure breadth of
content and depth of perspective
O
PR
During 2012, ACARA released two further versions
of its initial four curriculum documents, and though
it is not the intention of the authors to evaluate, in
this paper, the largely minor changes made to both
Content Descriptions in Versions 3 and 4.1, a brief
review of these amended curricula confirms that
little has changed in the critical areas investigated
in this paper. Of interest to the authors was
whether additional content, in the form of Content
Descriptions, evidenced a change in ACARA’s thinking
on how it intends to situate Australia’s Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples within the Australian
Curriculum. We would suggest that, while the overall
quantum of references increased, the more critical
question is whether additional ‘Aboriginal content’
evidences a significant correction to the curriculum,
or whether it is a disingenuous attempt by ACARA to
placate the concerns of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples and some teachers, by adding to the
overall volume of content, while failing to address
the cognitive, social, epistemological or ontological
weaknesses identified in earlier consultations. Our
view is that little has changed, and we are inclined to
the latter interpretation, not the former.
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K E V I N L O W E A N D T Y S O N Y U N K A P O R TA
Table 2. Analysis matrix combining elements from Table 1 and Figure 1
Protocols
Values
Processes
Systems
Land
Language
Culture
Time
Place
Relationships
These four elements comprise the columns of the
matrix and the six elements of Dr Grant’s Indigenous
framework form the rows (Table 2).
The presence of tangible items of Aboriginal
culture and history in the Australian Curriculum is
not in question. However, these do not necessarily
represent Aboriginal perspectives. Indigenous ‘ways
of knowing, being and thinking’ are flagged as ‘key
concepts’ in the curriculum documents; however,
these are intangible aspects of culture that cannot
be represented by mere cultural and historical facts
or items. Rather, they can be found in Indigenous
protocols, values, processes and systems, as represented in Table 2.
Mapping Indigenous knowledge
For the purposes of this appraisal, ways of being are
regarded as axiology and ontology, represented by
the perspective descriptors Values and Protocols. Ways
of knowing are regarded as epistemologies, represented by the perspective descriptor Systems. Ways
of thinking are regarded as cognition and practical
methodology, represented by the perspective
descriptor Processes.
The content descriptor Land encompasses perspectives on landscape, nature and natural phenomena.
Language refers to perspectives on contemporary
and historical communication forms. Culture refers
to both tangible and intangible aspects of lived
realities and expressions of ways of being, knowing
and thinking. Time refers to perspectives on
sequencing, chronology, temporal realities and causeand-effect relationships. Place refers to the narrative,
ritual and cultural meanings enfolded in spaces and
landscapes through long-term occupancy and custodianship of land. The category Relationships refers to
perspectives on the dynamic interaction between all
the other elements, and the connections within and
between human, spiritual and ecological systems.
4
Overall, this cultural analysis tool is a way of
determining the presence — or lack — of the intangible cultural elements, specifically ways of knowing,
being and thinking, that are flagged as key elements
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives
in the curriculum documents. The objective is to
determine whether cultural perspectives (not just
cultural items viewed from non-Aboriginal perspectives) are included in the curriculum, and to measure
the depth and breadth of cultural integrity expressed
by these perspectives.
Overall results of cultural analysis
A search for the keyword ‘Aboriginal’ in the Australian
Curriculum website resulted in 142 matches, from
which it was determined that 52 items actually dealt
with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander concept
of culture. Of these 52 items, many included examples
in which there was a choice between Asian or other
cultures rather than an Aboriginal focus for study.
Only five examples of Aboriginal perspective items
were included as Content Description (CD). Most
items were content Elaborations (E), and are thus
not considered as core content (Table 3).
Many of the Aboriginal perspectives items, even
in the most basic ‘processes’ column, seemed to deal
more with simple factual content rather than
Aboriginal ways of thinking and doing. However,
they may still have the potential for classes to
explore as Indigenous processes rather than basic
information seen from a non-Indigenous perspective,
particularly if teachers genuinely choose to ‘elaborate’
on the content by providing students with deeper
learning experiences. The use of the word ‘choose’ is
important here, since the Elaborations developed for
each of the Content Descriptions are not part of the
core or mandated content. This sends the message to
teachers that they are not required to teach Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander ways of being, knowing
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Table 3. Cultural analysis of curriculum documents
Values
Land
Protocols
E1
Language
Culture
E1
Time
Systems
Processes
Total
CD1, E1
CD1, E3
7
E1
E6
7
E9
E15
25
E3
Place
Relationships
E1
E1
CD1, E2
Total
3
1
18
and thinking in any content that has been mapped
as Content Elaborations. This appears to have been
left to the teacher’s discretion — an approach that is
at odds with the policy requirement that mandates
the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives.
Content descriptors
Almost half of the items in Table 3 (25 of 52) fall
under the descriptor Culture and mostly dealt with
tangible aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander material culture, history and pre-invasion
tradition which most likely would be viewed from a
non-Indigenous anthropological perspective if left
to teacher discretion. The lowest-scoring descriptor
was Place. There were seven items pertaining to
the Language descriptor, representing elements of
dialects of English or Indigenous expression in
English literature, or Aboriginal (and international)
vocabulary that has become part of Standard
Australian English. Content descriptors that registered in the Values column were Land, Culture and
Relationships, the latter being the one example
where ACARA has developed a range of content
across all four-perspective descriptors.
Perspective descriptors
Overall, only four items deal explicitly with
Aboriginal ways of being, as indicated in the Values
and Protocols columns in Table 3, under the
content descriptors Land, Culture and Relationships,
including Indigenous orientations to concepts of
leadership and social organisation. Notably absent
are Ethics and Law: the very elements that could
inform student behaviour, high expectations and
school–community relationships.
Of the 52 Indigenous perspective items, 18 appear
under the Systems descriptor, which pertains to
ways of knowing. Nine of these belong to the
CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 33, NO. 1
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CD1
1
CD1, E3
9
52
Culture descriptor, while the rest are distributed
across Land, Language, Time and Relationships.
Deeper engagement with Indigenous knowledge
systems here could present schools with the potential
to enrich programs with place-based local frameworks for knowledge transmission that are intellectually rigorous as well as culturally appropriate.
While public education is a long way from
engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
epistemologies in this way, we would nevertheless
argue for the desirability of a forward-looking
Australian Curriculum in this respect, making
provision for the professional educators and
researchers who are currently striving to develop this
kind of innovative practice and meaningful
engagement with cultural knowledge pedagogy.
The highest-scoring perspective descriptor was
Processes, with a total of 30 out of 52 items. Processes
pertain to ways of thinking and doing. As previously
identified, the items included were given the benefit
of the doubt in terms of their potential to deliver on
actual ways of thinking or doing, rather than just the
transmission and recall of basic cultural or historical
facts. If these items were presented in a way that
demanded application and transfer of Aboriginal
ways of thinking and doing to a variety of contexts
and disciplines, then the potential for inclusion of
these perspectives in areas of mainstream content
would be markedly increased. One advantage of this
kind of inclusion is that if Aboriginal perspectives
were delivered across the curriculum as ways
knowing and doing within the curriculum Content
Descriptions (rather than only as additional content)
then concerns about diminished space for mainstream
content could be neutralised.
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3. Cognitive analysis of the content
in the Australian Curriculum
Evaluation taxonomy
Not only are there concerns raised about the depth
and breadth of ACARA’s curriculum engagement
with Indigenous culture and knowledge, but there is
also concern that the descriptions of the curriculum
items embed low-level cognitive expectations on
student learning. Strauss (2000) defined curriculum
as the manifestation of an intellectual construct
about the nature of course content, students’ understanding of that content, and students’ cognitive
development. It is argued that this allows teachers to
construct learning experiences for students based on
their understanding of the domain content, on a
perception of students’ cognitive development based
in part on teacher expectations of student capacity,
and the explicit level of cognition specified within
the curriculum itself.
It is this nexus between the ascribed level of
cognition within the curriculum content, and the
specifically tagged Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander content that is the focus of this study. The
analysis draws on the revised Bloom’s taxonomy
(Anderson et al., 2000) to attain an understanding of
the minimum cognitive requirements of this content
and to ascertain an understanding of its potential
impact on student achievement of knowledge and
understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples.
As in Bloom’s original cognitive taxonomy
published in the 1950s, the revised taxonomy is a
hierarchy based on six categories of cognitive process
dimensions. While there are a number of significant
changes in the new taxonomy, it remains conceptually similar to that developed by Bloom in 1956
(Amer, 2006), with the integrity of the taxonomy
continuing to rest on the understanding that the
six cognitive dimensions move from a lesser to
greater cognitive complexity, and that this evolving
complexity impacts on teacher’s pedagogic practices
as they engage in designing teaching programs
(Raths, 2002).
Simply stated, the revised Bloom’s taxonomy
categorises thinking skills from the concrete to the
abstract. The lowest three levels of the cognitive
domain taxonomy are remembering, understanding and
applying, while the higher three levels are analysing,
evaluating and creating. Within this framework, there
is an implied correlation between the order of skills
6
required to achieve the level of learning, and the
expectations placed on the learner. It is argued that
effective learning builds on what the learner knows,
allowing them to move towards acquiring new
knowledge, skills and understanding. Recognising the
potential of this cognitive hierarchy enables teachers
to develop programs underpinned by content that
reinforces higher learning expectations and deepens
understanding (Anderson et al., 2000).
The use of Bloom’s taxonomy in the analysis of
the explicitly identified cognitive requirements in
the Australian Curriculum is supported by its broadbased acceptance within education, in identifying
the cognitive strengths of student learning embedded
in both curriculum and assessment (Näsström,
2009). The taxonomy, which is a schema for classifying educational goals, objectives, and educational
standards, provides an organisational structure that
applies a commonly understood meaning to the
specific learning objectives in the curriculum. It is
argued that when considered in tandem with the
previous cultural analysis, it is possible to use the
taxonomy to achieve a clear, concise visual understanding (Krathwohl, 2002) of the ACARA content as
it aligns to educational standards and goals, objectives and their actualisation as teaching programs
and activities (Forehand, 2005).
The four ACARA curriculum documents were
analysed to obtain an indication of the level of
knowledge and cognitive processes explicitly required
by the ACARA curriculum. It is important to note
that, at a minimum, teachers are expected to develop
teaching programs based on these learning requirements. We realise and acknowledge that many
teachers will, of course, teach beyond the specific
cognitive expectations in the curriculum, just as
they might in any other subject if it is of particular
interest to them, but this cannot be expected or
taken for granted. Consequently, this analysis is of
the curriculum as it is described within the course
Content Descriptions and Elaborations.
The link between curriculum content and
teaching and learning specifically extends to the
assessment of curriculum content knowledge, skills
and understanding. The development of achievement
standards, which is based on these content
Elaborations, compounds the impact on student
learning, because not only are teachers’ programs
informed by this content, but student achievement
will also be reported against achievement statements
developed from the very same course content.
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An analysis of the cognitive expectations within
the English and History curricula shows that there
has been an attempt to direct students to ‘examine’,
‘question’ and ‘compare’, all of which sit within
the analysing dimension of the taxonomy. It should
be noted that in the History curriculum ACARA
has used concepts rather than descriptive verbs to
identify the level of intended cognitive engagement,
necessitating a modified analytical approach
compared to the other three documents, which has
made the drawing of conclusions based upon a direct
comparison between all four curricula somewhat
problematic.
The analysis of both the History and English
curricula shows that the majority of content occurs
in the primary years, particularly in Year 4, as there
are only 18 items out of 83 that have been written
for Years 7 to 10. The lack of balance in the
placement of content fuels concerns about the
curriculum embedding low cognitive requirements,
as it is mainly in the secondary years that students
are provided with opportunities to hone critical
capacities that are supported through high-order
learning.
The targeted content in the Science curriculum
has been written for inclusion in both primary and
secondary years, but in all instances the content is
pitched at the lowest understanding level. Learning
at this level typically requires students to ‘acquire’
or develop an ‘understanding’ of concepts through
‘considering’, ‘researching’, ‘investigating’ and/or
‘explaining’ the technologies and practices of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The
weakness of this content is that it provides little
opportunity for teachers to extend student learning,
or broaden their cognitive engagement. Similarly,
Discussion
A search of the four curriculum areas revealed
142 instances of the word ‘Aboriginal’ across the
four syllabus documents, falling to 83 discrete items
when the ACARA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Cross-curriculum Priorities tag was applied. A summary
of the analysis of the items is shown in Table 4,
which maps the cognitive elements from the
revised taxonomy that appear in the curriculum
for each year of schooling. The number of items in
each cell of the table represents the total number
of key verbs found in the entire curriculum Content
Descriptions and Elaborations that indicate the level
of cognitive abstraction required to achieve the
designated learning outcome in a particular school
year.
Of the 83 items, 64 fell within the three cognitive
dimensions remembering, understanding and applying.
Verbs such as ‘identify’, ‘recall’, ‘recognise’, ‘research’,
‘investigate’ and ‘classify’ were used to describe the
level of cognitive engagement, indicating to the
teacher that the teaching and learning experiences
in those areas have particular cognitive expectations
of what is required of students to learn, know or do.
While it is appropriate to cognitively scaffold student
learning as students progress through their learning
to support their engagement with new knowledge
and skills, it is also essential that students are
empowered to construct their own learning by
being challenged to ‘achieve new understanding and
knowledge through accessing challenging higherorder learning (Roelofs & Terwel, 1999). Curriculum
has a powerful role in supporting teachers to develop
quality-learning experiences by clearly describing a
range of content that embeds high order learning
outcomes (Hattie, 2005).
Table 4. Summary of an analysis of all Phase 1 content in the ACARA curriculum
Bloom’s cognitive
dimension
F
1
2
3
4
5
Remembering
2
1
Understanding
4
2
8
7
7
5
Applying
1
1
2
1
1
Analysing
1
2
6
7
8
9
10
Totals
Year
3 (4%)
Evaluating
1
Creating
Total
7
1
6
6
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8
3
3
4
51 (61%)
1
2
1
10 (12%)
1
3
14 (17%)
1
1
3 (4%)
1
11
11
2 (2%)
15
6
10
4
5
0
9
83
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the curriculum does little to provide teachers with
content that would enable them to explore with
students both the social context in which knowledge
is developed, and the possibility that Indigenous
knowledge has its own ontological validity that is
independent of that of the ‘hard’ sciences.
Of the four courses, the Mathematics curriculum
is the most limited in content that addresses an
Aboriginal perspective. Of the few content examples
that are included, five are situated in the primary
years and, as in Science, are located at the understanding level within the taxonomy. The only
two Content Elaborations in the secondary
curriculum appear in the analysis of statistics and
data in Year 10, where students are asked to mathematically compare Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander populations with the Australian population
as a whole. There is no embedded expectation on
teachers to provide an opportunity for students to
engage in any critical analyse that would lead to an
informed understanding why such a statistical
discrepancy exists between data sets for Indigenous
and non-Indigenous Australians. We would suggest
that these sequences of learning exemplify the larger
argument of how the ACARA curriculum development process has embedded a deficient understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people, their experiences and their epistemologies — through both the choice of content, and the
underpinning level of learning cognition identified
within that content.
Overall, there is a significant disparity between
both the quantity and the quality of the cognitive
learning embedded in the curriculum content, with
the stated intention that students should develop
a deep understanding of the histories and cultures
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This
is compounded by the disconnect between the
coherence of learning between the primary and
secondary years, with 65 out of the 83 instances
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content
occurring across Foundation to Year 6. We would
suggest that the impact of these limited learning
opportunities at secondary level minimises the
capacity of the curriculum to fully develop students’
engagement in higher-order learning at a time when
they reach greater cognitive maturity and capacity
to participate in complex and integrated learning.
The analysis of the cognitive requirements of the
four syllabuses demonstrates that 68 items of content
have been embedded in lower-order outcomes found
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in the remembering, understanding and applying
dimensions. While acknowledging that learning
across Foundation to Year 10 should be written to
draw on prior knowledge, and should scaffold
student learning to achieve the grounding of foundational knowledge and skills, it is expected that at
each stage of learning they are also exposed to higher
levels of knowledge, understanding and skills, and
develop deeper understanding of more complex
curriculum outcomes and content. Effective teaching
practice, based on a high-quality curriculum, should
inform student learning and assessment by
incorporating content that requires teachers to work
with students in those cognitive domains that
require them move towards higher order learning.
For the acquisition of curriculum knowledge and
understanding to evolve across the years of learning,
it would be expected that the curriculum would
ensure that students were provided with everricher opportunities as they moved through their
secondary education. This analysis highlights that
only four items of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander content in Years 7 to 10 were written for the
more cognitively challenging levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy.
The level of disconnect between the aspirations
expressed in the Shape Paper and the reality evidenced
within the ACARA curriculum, reveals an unwillingness to translate these aspirations into a quality
curriculum.
The mapping of the embedded cognitive requirements of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Crosscurriculum Priorities in the Australian Curriculum
denotes a consistent lack of rigour in both the
scope and depth of cognitive engagement across the
Foundation to Year 10 curriculum. The mapping of
the mandatory Content Descriptions and depth
studies, and the optional Elaborations demonstrates
that there are few opportunities for teachers to
engage students in explicit teaching of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander content. We would suggest
that students are not being enabled to critique their
own contemporary environment, or develop
informed judgements about the place that Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples have within the
broader ‘Australian’ body politic in which they and
both communities co-exist.
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about the development and maintenance of state
authority over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples.
This evaluation of the ACARA curriculum aims
to investigate the curriculum’s engagement with
those key discourses that describe the historical
and contemporary experiences of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples, and their socio-political,
legal and economic interaction with the state. These
provide teachers and students with a common
framework and language with which to create a
shared meaning from events and policies that have
fashioned national, local and family histories, and
which have affected relationships between Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous
Australians. The conceptual analysis enables an
insight into how students can be exposed to learning
to achieve an informed understanding of issues and
events that are representative of the socio-political
divide that still exists between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous Australians (Standfield, 2004).
4. Socio-political analysis of key terms
in the Australian curriculum
One of the core aspects of the state’s control of
education is its capacity to initiate the development
of curriculum. One aspect of this control is the power
vested in state to ensure that national cultural and
historical discourses supportive of its histories and
aspirations are entrenched as core content in state
or national curriculum. These discourses normalise
agreed national ‘realities’ by embedding privileged
‘canonical’ knowledge in ways that provide teachers
with little opportunity to develop teaching which
challenges its nature, form, context or bias (Apple,
1995; McMurchy-Pinkington, Pikiao & Rogomai,
2008) or their relationship to state-supported
sectional interests (McCarthy, Giardina, Harewood
& Park, 2005; Pinar, 1993; Said, 1993). This analysis
identifies the extent to which ACARA has constructed
the learning process, such that students are enabled
to meaningfully engage in, oppositional discourses
Table 5. Summary of social and political content in the ACARA curriculum documents
Social justice
area
F
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Total
3
5
Year
Aboriginal rights
2
Invasion
Colonisation
Aboriginal languages
2
1
1
1
1
3
1
Reconciliation
2
1
1
Assimilation
1
Stolen generation
1
1
Social justice
Aboriginal identity
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
3
‘Terra Nullius’
0
Aboriginal self-determination
0
Aboriginal autonomy
0
Aboriginal sovereignty
0
Colonialism
0
Land rights
0
Racism
0
Total
Note:
1
0
1
1
4
0
10
4
1
2
5
19
Mid grey highlights those years where there is no mention of any of these elements.
Dark grey highlights those concepts where there is no direct identified curriculum content.
Paler grey highlights where there are two or fewer tagged content statements attached to this year of learning.
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K E V I N L O W E A N D T Y S O N Y U N K A P O R TA
Discussion
Further, not only does this failure affect all students’
The information in Table 5 was obtained from a
word-and-phrase search of the four relevant ACARA
curriculum documents. In some cases the search
terms had to be manipulated to locate content for
terms such as ‘social justice’ and ‘Aboriginal rights’.
Consequently, Table 5 may not be a definitive list
of all possible relevant content, but is indicative of
the general placement of content specific to these
terms within each document. The items assessed in
this evaluation were generated from a scan of the
glossaries in current New South Wales syllabuses, and
represent a smaller but indicative listing of the
historical and contemporary issues addressed within
current state curricula.
Research from a variety of educational jurisdictions in both Australia and overseas has shown that
it is possible to teach social justice outcomes by
providing all students with opportunities to develop
an understanding of the historical and ongoing
impact of the social, political, legal and religious
oppression of minority students and their communities. It has been shown that there are both personal
and broader social benefits that accrue to students
exposed to explicit and purposeful teaching about
social justice, with students more likely to perform
well at school and be better adjusted socially (A. M.
Banks & Banks, 1995; J. A. Banks, 2010). In essence,
an education that primarily serves the interests of
the dominant section or culture creates a context in
which schools are unlikely to acknowledge let alone
embrace the equal rights of minority students, their
cultural knowledge or historical, social and cultural
background and experiences.
McCarthy et al. (2005) noted that, in America,
those entrusted with the responsibility of curriculum
development have continued to take a conservative
position that denies the ‘teeming multiplicity’ of the
world that sits outside the school gates, preferring
instead to perpetuate the myth of cultural homogeneity and social normalisation (p. 156). The failure
of the Australian Curriculum to provide support for
teachers to construct student learning to illuminate
these contentious issues ensures that major areas of
historical and contemporary national public policy
vis-à-vis Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
remains largely uncontested within the curriculum.
Indifference to these issues denies all students the
opportunity to be informed about those sociopolitical discourses that have forged the environment
in which Aboriginal people exist in Australia today.
learning opportunities, but also, in particular, it
10
denies Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
and their communities the ability to interrogate
within an educational environment, the historical,
social, political and economic circumstances of
their disenfranchisement from the state. It is, in fact,
arguable that ACARA has essentially perpetuated
the long tradition of curriculum jurisdictions within
Australia, in developing an un-problematised, anglocentric version of history and social experience,
through the processes of sanitising and limiting the
corpus of ‘significant’ events through which students
are invited to explore the nation’s ‘shared history’
with its Indigenous peoples.
Evidence continues to mount that Indigenous
communities are victims of a systemically supported
amnesia of the importance of home cultures and
languages to a student’s wellbeing, and a failure to
address the impact of linguistic and cultural stereotyping and racism on students and their communities (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2009).
It has been noted that the level of cultural and
linguistic dissonance between Indigenous peoples
and mainstream education is such that, without
direct and sustained intervention in both the
curriculum and pedagogic domains, these deeply
embedded biases will continue to affect the educational opportunities of minority students (Kanu,
2007).
A key element in developing a culturally
responsive pedagogy is a high-quality curriculum
from which teachers can be guided in developing
structured learning experiences (Castagno & Brayboy,
2008). It is our contention that the capacity of
teachers to develop a contextual and responsive
learning environment will be significantly determined by the manner in which the Australian
Curriculum is constructed, and whether it directs
high-level learning opportunities that are situated in
meaningful ways that are culturally appropriate to
the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander students.
Analysis
Table 5 shows the quantum and sequencing of the
key social, political and legal issues that define, shape
and explain the social, political, economic and legal
agendas that have impacted on the lives of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This evaluation
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THE INCLUSION OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER CONTENT
focused on the inclusion of these 15 identified key
social justice concepts within the Phase 1 ACARA
curriculum documents.
Table 5 indicates where this content has been
mapped. It clearly identifies that, in areas for which
content has been written, none appears in more than
two of the potential 11 school years from Foundation
to Year 10 for which these courses have been written.
The exception is the concept of ‘Aboriginal identity’,
where items have been included in Years 2, 4 and 8.
It is notable that the Year 10 Depth Study in History
is the one instance in which students are provided
an option to study the push for acceptance and
access to human rights and freedoms in the
post-WW II period. However, even at the Year 10
level, the cognitive level of this content is limited in
both its scope and depth. The curriculum has been
written to provide little opportunity for students
to explore Aboriginal peoples’ own agency in
challenging systemic racism, or the counter efforts
of government to deny, limit, remove or deny
citizenship or human rights from Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples. The low-level learning
attached to the content further weakens the potential
of this study. Of the five Elaborations within this
depth study, three have been written at the understanding level, while the other two ask students to
analyse the consequences of colonisation on
Aboriginal peoples. The opportunity to interrogate
the commonalities of the Indigenous experience
across nations, of invasion and colonisation, is left
unexplored other than for a reference in the Year 9
topic on ‘nation making’, and the ‘intended and
unintended’ consequences of ‘contact’ on Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Even a generous
interpretation of this view of history by teachers
would not provide students with an informed understanding of the effects of colonisation, or of the
similarities between the colonial power’s justifications for annexation, loss of sovereignty, and the
forced removal of Indigenous peoples from their
Country.
Omissions
The omission of many of the key concepts identified
in the analysis tests the claim by ACARA that the
curriculum provides all Australian students with the
capacity to develop a deep understanding of the
experiences, histories and cultures of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples. There appears to be an
absence of content that would enable students to
CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 33, NO. 1
explore many of the significant social justice issues
that have impacted on the daily lives of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Key concepts such
as native title rights to ancestral land, self-determination, social agency, and collective resistance to the
range of government policies and/or the long-term
effects of colonisation remain largely hidden from
student inquiry.
We would argue that Australian Curriculum has
failed to provide students with the learning opportunities to examine past and ongoing conflicts over the
right to land, appraise and evaluate the statutory and
judicial processes of the state that denied Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples sovereign legal
rights to Country, or appreciate that our cultural
practices are representative of unique epistemologies.
While constructs such as ‘invasion’ ‘sovereign rights’
or ‘treaties’ are obviously too challenging to the
vision of benign colonial integration, we are intrigued
that students are not given an opportunity to explore
the notion of ‘social justice’ within the construct of
social policy making in Australia vis-à-vis Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We would suggest
that unpacking this concept would provide a key
framework for school discussion on the levels of
social, economic and political disengagement seen in
many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It is difficult to explain why such fundamental
concepts are neither represented nor challenged in
a contemporary curriculum designed to prepare
students for the complex, interconnected world that
fashions many students’ social experiences.
5. Conclusion
The ACARA Shape Paper promised much in regard to
both the quality and scope of content. The hope
was that the Australian Curriculum would underpin
opportunities for all students to develop deep
knowledge and understanding of the histories and
cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples. However, it is clear from this analysis that
in each of the initial Phase 1 courses, ACARA has
failed to fulfil this promise. It would appear that the
opportunity is fast evaporating to develop a quality
curriculum that would advance a deep understanding
of the histories and cultures of Indigenous Australia.
The questionable level of cultural inclusivity afforded
to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is
compounded by low learning expectations, underpinned by inadequate attention to cognitive
engagement of student learning and a minimal
11
K E V I N L O W E A N D T Y S O N Y U N K A P O R TA
inclusion of key social concepts and issues. It would
be fair to summarise the current inclusion of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content as weak,
often tokenistic and overwhelmingly unresponsive
to historical and contemporary realities. It is regrettable that the states, territories and Commonwealth
failed to ensure that ACARA postponed the final
signoff of these curriculum documents until such
time as they were modified to take these and similar
issues into account. Instead, these flawed documents
have passed to school systems and teachers to
develop curriculum that addresses authentic
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content. Though
many embraced the prospect of a national
curriculum written in the spirit of Prime Minister
Rudd’s acknowledgement in 2008 of past and
continuing injustices to Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples, ACARA has shunned the opportunity afforded it to reposition curricula as a source
of social and political discourse surrounding the
shared histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians.
This failure is remarkably similar to the failed
efforts to develop more inclusive curriculum 20 years
earlier. Rizvi and Crowley (1993) had observed that
curriculum developers generally lacked the will, or
the courage, to face the challenge of building key
national documents that were responsive to the
socio-economic context of students’ actual lives and
experiences. A consequence of ignoring the social
realities of students in the 21st century is that the
new curricula fosters a skewed learning environment
in which areas of contemporary social history are
‘whitewashed’ simply by being largely left out of
the privileged content of a national curriculum.
McCarthy, Giardina, Harewood & Park (2005) also
noted, that the process of curriculum development
that has largely failed to acknowledge the social and
cultural identities of ethnic minorities within the
multicultural state is primarily a consequence of
the controls exerted by the state over the construction
of curriculum. They argued that the process of
including only that content that privileges the
epistemological and ontological experiences of the
colonising cultures over those of the Indigenous
peoples is part of a larger colonialist project that has
consistently sought to limit the opportunities for
both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to
interrogate the lived experiences of both the
colonised and coloniser populations.
12
In its attempt to legitimise the Eurocentric
cultural and historical perspectives, ACARA has
fallen well short of its own stated goals, and responsibilities to provide the content needed by teachers
to address the points of tension between the
divergent positions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Instead, ACARA has timidly opted
to shift this responsibility to the often ill-resourced
classroom teacher who, unsupported by the
curriculum, must now attempt to create an intelligible, sequenced and contextual learning experience
for all students. We acknowledge that, while many
teachers will continue as they have in the past, to
provide students with these learning experiences,
this should surely be supported by an explicit,
high-quality curriculum instead of curriculum serendipity. What is clearly lacking from ACARA is the
sense of a learning entitlement that would provide
all students with opportunities to be informed about
the nature and form of the shared and parallel
histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority, 2011, p. 7).
While ACARA has a stated intention of ensuring
“that all young Australians will be given the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories
and cultures”, (Australian Curriculum, Assessment
and Reporting Authority, 2011), it has been argued
here that this has patently not been achieved. We
suggest that these intentions have not translated well
into the four curriculum documents, either in quality
or in substance. There is scant evidence that what
little material has been included has been adequately
scoped across the years of learning, or cognitively
matched to its intended purpose. The analysis
presented in this paper demonstrates that the
curriculum content does not provide teachers with
the necessary tools to construct learning experiences
that would provide students with the depth and
breadth of content needed to acquire a deep
knowledge and understanding of the histories and
cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples and their significance within the Australian
state.
We would strongly urge ACARA to establish a
panel of Indigenous academics with demonstrated
expertise in curriculum design and development,
cognitive development, and Indigenous epistemology and ontology, to undertake a thorough
re-appraisal of the national curricula in line with the
CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 33, NO. 1
THE INCLUSION OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER CONTENT
stated intentions as set out within the Shape Paper
(Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority, 2011). We would also urge the state and
territory educational authorities to establish
long-term plans to assist teachers develop teaching
and assessment strategies that embed quality
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content across
the curriculum.
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